Ben hesitated, hand almost shaking as it hovered over the static clamp that would seal his uniform. For a moment he simply stood there, unable to move, unable to press the button, to turn and walk away. He closed his eyes, breathed a broken sigh.

Seventh Yorkshire. The name hung in the cold, teary silence like an ebony headstone. Dimitrov pulled in a shaky breath, turned away, hands rising to cover his eyes.

“When we were on the Hok. . .” She tried.

“I remember.”

When he turned back to her, there was a new pain in his eyes, the shattered glass of a broken man’s soul. He looked away again.

“I’m from the Brijyo sector originally. Carridan, Epsilon Augustus, Gamma Yorkshire, a few other inhabited systems.” He paused, pulled in a shaky breath. “I grew up on Davies’ World, fourth planet in the Carridan system, but most of my family were colonists on Seventh Yorkshire. When I joined the Navy, my parents and Simon, my little brother, moved back in with the rest of the family and set up their own ranch on the largest continent. Everything was fine, I talked with Simon and dad about once every three weeks, when the alignment between Sol and Gamma Yorkshire was close enough to patch a signal through on the standard comm frequencies without a lot of interference, and then I took my first assignment onboard the Hok.”

He swallowed, turned back and slowly, almost reluctantly, met Tessa’s eyes. She made a tender gesture for him to sit, and he smiled softly in response, then crossed to the silicon window, flattened his hand against it. Beyond, the Hok drifted steadily by, a monolith of thought and reality merged in the endless darkness.

“Three weeks in, a Coralate warship bent space into the Austerlitz system, just on the rim of Brijyo. The colonists had a chance to fire off one mayday before the orbital bombardments began and all comms traffic in the system went dead. By the time the Hok, the Von, the Folkvangr and the Julius arrived, fifteen more Cygnan warships had arrived in the sector and burnt everything living out of every system except Gamma Yorkshire.” He paused, closed his eyes. “The admirals all agreed that it was too late for anything but damage control. My squadron was flying guard duty for the civilian transports that we were taking on and directing to the cargo bays and hangars when the Coralate fleet arrived.”

He turned back, met Tessa’s eyes as she swallowed.

“We got eight hundred and forty three people off the surface of Seventh Yorkshire. Eight hundred and forty three– out of millions. Then we jumped,” he made a dismissive gesture, “left everyone else on that planet to die. Left my entire family to die.” He closed his eyes. “I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

He pulled in a shaky, desperate breath as Tessa crossed the distance between them and took him in her arms, hugging him, kissing his shoulder, breathing with him as reluctant tears carved tiny trails across his cheeks, mingled with her own.

“I couldn’t. . .”

“Shh.” She whispered, voice soft, gentle, a caress in sound. His face dropped, kissed her hair, slipped across her neck to her shoulder. She closed her eyes, burrowed into him, opened her mouth as he pulled her closer, her hands moving up along his back.

“I love you, Ben. That will never change.” She breathed, lips quivered. “After this is all over, after the war is over, lets go somewhere nice together, okay? Lets find a beach or a hillside or something and just forget about everything, okay? Just you and me and no one else. No war, no admirals, no seindrives, no Cygnans. Just us.” She whispered, fought the cracking in her voice. “Just us.”

Ben’s eyes squeezed tighter, but he nodded, pulled her in closer. Neither one put words to the thoughts that were rolling through their minds, the doubts, the knowledge that, when the war was over, they might both be dead, their entire race burnt from the cosmos by the callous hand of the Coralate armada. Tessa pulled in her own shaky breath, buried her face into Dimitrov’s chest, forced the thoughts from her mind.

There has to be a way.

There has to be a way to beat the Coralate, to save humanity before it’s too late.

A way.

There has to be a way.